February 26, 2019
Dearest Readers,
Welcome! Lots of great stuff for you today, including On This Date visiting Galileo and Trayvon Martin, both of whom are now dead. Top of the Charts visits 1966 and Henry David Thoreau provides the text for Philosophy 101, a quote about money not being able to buy happiness.
Thank you for visiting,
Cheers!
xoxoxo
Kaitlyn
THE ALMANAC
On This Date:
In 1616 – Galileo Galilei is banned by the Catholic Church from teaching or defending the nonsense that the earth orbits the sun, known as heliocentrism. Galileo’s troubles began in 1610 when he had the nerve to observe the stars and planets with his newfangled telescope, which led him the ideas that contradicted Church teachings and doctrine. Galileo would never completely comply with this directive and stood trial in 1633, was found guilty and spent his remaining eleven years under house arrest.
In 2012 – Trayvon Martin, 17 and black, is shot to death by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman had confronted Martin who was walking on a street after having the temerity to be visiting relatives in the gated community Zimmerman served as a neighborhood watch officer. Zimmerman would be arrested in April and stood trial for murder and was acquited.
Top of the Charts
#1 songs on this date in 1966:
Hot 100 – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’…Nancy Sinatra (only week)
Soul Chart – Baby Scratch My Back…Slim Harpo (1st of two weeks)
Country Chart – Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line…Buck Owens (2nd of seven weeks)
Album Chart – Whipped Cream and Other Delights…Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass (8th of eight non-consecutive weeks)
– Chart data courtesy of Billboard.
Numbers Racket
10,659: the continuous number of days the US has been at war.
22.034: the number of dollars, in trillions, of America’s national debt. – Source: usdebtclock.org
622: days until Election Day 2020.
Philosophy 101
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
We are conditioned to want and appreciate money from an early age. Whether we got what we wanted for Christmas depended in large measure on how much money mom and dad had. Indeed, most of the circumstances of our youth was dependent on this. As adults we’re bombarded with revels and advertisements that either requires money or reinforce how important it is.
But how important is it? Does a large bank account make us happy? Is our sole purpose on this planet the wholesale acquisition of money? For some, of course, it is. Since time immemorial there have been those who have had a knack for making and keeping and investing money. Bully for them and good for them because an economy needs people like that. Some of us work for them.
For most of us though, making enormously large sums of money is not the purpose of our existence. Of course, we do need money to provide for ourselves and too little money causes problems, just like too much money can, but no amount of money can buy what our soul truly needs: a life that is useful to others and to ourselves, a life that utilizes the 24 hours each of us is issued each day – the only commodity each of us has in equal measure – and maximizes our talents. Money cannot provide any of these things. Only going where our hearts tell us to go and following the instincts that are telling us how to get there will provide what our soul requires.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was, among other things, an American writer, naturalist and philosopher.